


Click!

by meetscute



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 05:59:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15723405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meetscute/pseuds/meetscute
Summary: Set in the near future, Rey and Ben Solo meet via a dating app that is singlehandedly pairing people with their soulmates. It makes no sense to Rey.





	Click!

**NEW YORK CITY**

**2020**

“I hear it might snow later,” muttered the taxi driver, with a glance in the rearview mirror.

Rey Kanata didn’t answer, just clutched at the tiny data chip she wore on a rubber band around her wrist, as if it were jewelry. She knew she looked ridiculous; but it was comforting, having the chip with her all the time.

The first snow. That had always been Rose’s favorite day of the year.  _It’s when the world feels full of magic, when anything seems possible,_  Rose used to say, with an infectious smile. Then she would drag Rey outside to twirl in the snow, before coming back in to make cocoa with dollops of whipped cream.

Rey reached up a hand to wipe brusquely at her eyes. It was still hard, thinking about Rose.

 _I’m going on a date tonight,_ she thought, wondering how Rose would have replied. Probably something like, “What shoes are you wearing? Send me a pic!” Rey glanced down at her sodden gray boots. Definitely not Rose-approved.

Well, it was a big deal that she was going on a date at all. She was really only here to experience the Click algorithm firsthand.

Click had launched a few years ago, when Rey was in high school. Now she was a junior at NYU studying computer science. It had been a normal enough college experience so far, romantically speaking: a few fumbling hookups with guys in the nearby dorms, until her friend Finn asked her out last spring. It had felt so logical—they were in the same classes, liked all the same things—yet when Finn broke it off, Rey hadn’t even felt sad. Which was how she’d known that they’d never really been more than friends the whole time.

A month later, Rose died.

It was a brain aneurysm. She’d had a terrible headache one day and passed out, and then she was  _gone_ , just like that. It felt senseless and irrational, and even now, Rey couldn’t fully process it.  _She wasn’t exhibiting any symptoms,_  the doctors assured Rey and Maz in the ER,  _there was no way you could have known._  As if that knowledge might somehow make them feel better.

It wasn’t fair. Her expansive, impulsive little sister never got to graduate, to go to college, to actually  _live._

After it happened, Rey had ignored her dean’s offer to take some time off and fled straight back here, to school. Maz was home in Boston, grieving and alone, and part of her knew she should go be with her. Another, greater part of her needed space. That house was filled with too many memories. It was so much easier in the bustling, comforting anonymity of New York.

Still, her dean had called her in again just last week, and strongly encouraged her to take a few weeks of personal leave. Guess they’d finally noticed her dramatic drop in grades this quarter. Rey had shaken her head and insisted that she didn’t  _need_  time off. Her classwork was only suffering because she’d been pouring all her energy into something else, something that, in the long run, was much more meaningful than school.

But even Rey couldn’t avoid learning about Click. It was everywhere now—in pop-up ads on her phone and enormous billboards outside her dorm room, and in half the conversations she overheard on the subway.  _Computer_  magazine had even given it a front-page feature. The future of relationships, people were calling it, the answer to modern romance. The greatest data project ever undertaken.  _That_  was when Rey had taken notice. She knew better than to believe Photoshopped ads, but data she understood.

Beneath its sugared, glittering promises of happily ever after, Click was entirely data-driven. The moment Rey joined the service, it swept the Web with surgical precision, finding every last trace of her digital presence: her Facebook posts, the scans of her high school yearbooks, every item she’d purchased or commented on or “liked.” Click compiled it all, a web of lingering digital fingerprints, and used that to formulate its famous thousand-item questionnaire.

All that accumulated data, about all its tens of millions of users, enabled Click to predict romantic potential with terrifying accuracy.

 _Why not?_ Rey had thought once she’d read the article. She was trying to code personality analytics herself; it might help her research. And what did she have to lose, anyway?

When she’d finished the survey, the computer had promptly informed her that she had three hundred and four matches in the United States with a compatibility rating of over ninety-five percent; and was she interested in them all, or just the twenty-eight in the ninety-ninth percentile?

Rey had hurriedly selected the ninety-ninth percentile. The mere thought of three hundred dates made her dizzy.

As if reading her mind, the taxi TV before her lit up with an all-too-familiar ad of a couple rocking on an old-fashioned swing set, their heads tipped back in laughter. They looked beautiful and carefree and charmed. “When it’s right, it just Clicks,” a cheerful voice-over reminded her. Rey shrank further into her seat. She pulled the data chip off her rubber band and began snapping it nervously in and out of her phone.

“I’m actually about to go on a Click date,” she shocked herself by saying aloud.

The driver gave a hearty laugh. “Good for you! My daughter joined Click last year, and now she’s engaged!”

Rey knew he meant well, but the statement made her even more anxious.

They pulled to a stop. Rey held up her phone to confirm payment before fumbling for her coat and her purse, then stepped out onto the curb. The door to the restaurant rose up before her, an enormous iron gateway with a scrolling sign that read  _The Aviary._  It was trendy and new, with intimidating white tablecloths and French words painted on the walls; the type of place that Click had clearly approved for first dates.

All the “dates” Rey had ever been on (she used the term loosely) had involved the computer lab or peanut M&M’s or sex; or on a good night, all three.

She realized with slight panic that she’d never actually been on a real, grown-up date. And now she was about to go out with someone without knowing his name or what he looked like or anything at all about him, except that Click had decided they were ninety-nine percent compatible.

The thought of the compatibility rating calmed her. Rey imagined her personality mapped out in binary code, a ghostly string of ones and zeroes, like the instructions for some program about to be run. People were so complicated—sensitive and unpredictable and erratic—but code made sense. Code could be analyzed, and  _fixed._

She hurried through the front doors to the gleaming dark wood bar, grateful that for once she’d arrived early. “Water, please,” she murmured.

The bartender barely glanced over as he poured a glass. It was sparkling water, evanescent little bubbles floating lazily toward the surface. Rey hated sparkling water, but she was wound too tightly to protest. She took a frantic gulp.

“Hey, I think we’re supposed to Click.”

A man, with jet-black, shoulder length hair and pale skin, leaned on the bar next to her. He gave a blazing smile and a bit of a shrug; as if to say,  _I know this is the awkward part, but were in it together, right?_  He held up his phone; and on his gloriously shattered screen Alexa saw the telltale yellow of the Click app.

“Um, yeah,” she stammered, reaching in her bag for her phone, as if to prove him right.  _He_  was in her ninety-ninth percentile of compatibility? Guys like that—sexy, smooth, self-assured—never went for girls like her. Already she felt like the butt of some cosmic joke.

“I’m Ben,” the man went on. Rey nodded, distracted, sifting through her bag with a rising sense of urgency.

 _Shit, shit,_ shit. She realized with a nauseous, sinking feeling that she’d left her phone in the cab. And the data chip was still snapped into the phone.

“I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” All her work—everything that mattered to her anymore—was on that data chip.

Ben leaned forward, his brown eyes lit up with concern. “Are you okay?”

Rey shook her head. She was about to scream or cry, she wasn’t sure which. “I left my phone in the taxi.”

“Want to use my phone to call yours?” Ben offered, holding out his iPhone 12.

Rey took it mutely, her pulse quickening as she tapped out her own number.  _Come on, come_  on, she thought, praying that the cabdriver would pick up. But no one answered.

“What if you tried to track it?” Ben offered, but Rey was already logging in, fingers flying as she answered her elaborate series of security questions. Beneath the spidery cracked glass of Ben’s screen appeared a map of New York. And there was her phone, a tiny blue dot struggling valiantly against the traffic of the Holland Tunnel.

She looked up at him, knowing this date was ruined before it even began, but also oddly relieved that she wouldn’t have to go through with it. It would never have worked anyway. He was so searingly confident and she was—well, herself.

“Can you help me get my phone back?”

“Okay,” he said slowly, as if caught off guard by the question. Then he smiled. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

Hadn’t he already said that? It took a moment for Rey to realize what he was doing—giving her an opening to provide her own name. She felt even more foolish. “I’m Rey,” she said, as if that explained everything, and started toward the door.

* * *

 

**BEN**

Ben Solo clung to the subway pole, staring in curious amusement at the petite girl before him. She was pretty in a wispy, ethereal way, with chestnut hair and hazel eyes, and the sort of translucent skin that comes from spending too much time indoors, as if she were still reflecting the glow of her computer screen. A modern-day digital nymph.

She’d looked so devastated, and embarrassed, when she’d asked for his help getting her phone back. He couldn’t help but agree, because some part of him loved playing the hero, and hadn’t he always bragged that adventures brought out his best work? So he’d hiked his camera bag higher on his shoulder and followed her out the door.

Now they were on the PATH, racing her phone to New Jersey in complete silence.  Rey hadn’t said a word since they boarded the train ten minutes ago. There was a single tan rubber band around her wrist, which she kept snapping anxiously against the pale skin of her forearm.

For once, Ben found himself with a girl, with no clue what to say.

There was something weird about this setup, about being told that you were ninety-nine percent compatible with someone before you even met her—before you even knew her name. It birthed too many expectations. It made him wish that he’d met Rey the normal way: at a crowded bar where they’d have to shout over the music, where he didn’t know anything at all about her. And with more alcohol—definitely more alcohol.

Except he knew he wouldn’t have talked to Rey if it weren’t for Click. She was nothing like the girls he normally went for, with their dangly earrings and loud voices, wearing short dresses in primary colors. She was something completely different. It intrigued him, and scared him a little, too.

“Why did you sign up for Click?” Rey asked, evidently thinking along the same lines.

 _Because of Phasma._ He tried to make light of the question. “Already want to know why ‘normal’ dating hasn’t worked for me? Do you ask all your Click dates this early in the night?”

“This is my first Click date.” She kept snapping that rubber band, her entire body held rigidly, stiffly, as if she had a glass of water balanced on her head and her life depended on not spilling it. “I signed up because it seemed like the logical way to go on dates, I guess.”

The train rattled around a turn. Ben clutched the central pole tighter to avoid swerving off balance, but Rey reached at the same time. Her gloved hand landed atop his. She quickly shifted away.

“It’s my first Click date, too,” he admitted.

“Did your friends talk you into it?”

“More like all the brides I’ve photographed lately. It’s how most of them met their husbands.” He instantly felt awkward—he shouldn’t have brought up marriage with someone he’d just met—but Rey didn’t seem especially bothered by the comment.

Though she might be slightly more bothered by the truth, which was that he hadn’t fully gotten over his ex.

He’d fallen for Phasma fast. But then, love came easily to Ben; he was always tumbling in and out of love to varying degrees. He loved the old woman on his block, with her window box full of daisies; the girl who worked at the coffee shop and always slipped him extra muffins; every bride he’d ever photographed. He couldn’t take a decent picture of something without falling in love with it, at least a little.

He could still remember the exact moment he met Phasma. It was at an outdoor concert: she’d stood before him wearing jean shorts, holding a bottle of orange soda, craning her neck to see the stage. Ben couldn’t look away from the curve of her neck, the delicate row of piercings up the curve of her ear. Finally he’d lifted her onto his shoulders to give her a better view. When he kissed her that night, she’d tasted like the tart orange soda.

Phasma was the reason he’d signed up for Click. As if by finding someone more compatible—upgrading from her, the way she’d done to him—he could prove that she hadn’t really hurt him.

The train turned again, and must have hit a cellular hot spot, because all of a sudden Ben’s phone erupted in a series of angry buzzing. Dozens of texts cascaded onto the screen at once. Ben glanced down, curious; and his eyes widened when he saw what was written there.

This night just kept getting more surprising.

* * *

 

**REY**

Rey squirmed, trying to focus on the brightly colored ads that flickered over the opposite wall of the subway car. But she couldn’t help shooting glances at Ben, at the strong, clean lines of his profile, the way his hands gripped tight to the subway rail, his gray peacoat turning his eyes such a deep brown.

She kept having the strangest urge to reach out and grab hold of him, as if to test whether he was real.

“I’m sorry. You really don’t have to stay,” she said now, feeling guilty for ruining his night.

“It  _is_  my phone we’re using to track yours,” he pointed out.

“I know, I just—”

“Maybe I want to be here,” Ben interrupted, with a look she couldn’t quite read. “Maybe I’m a sucker for impossible tasks.”

She didn’t know what that meant. “Well, thank you.”

“Besides, my best photos are born out of spontaneity.” Ben gestured to a dark bag slung over one shoulder, which Rey hadn’t noticed. “I’m a photography student.”

“Oh,” Rey said quietly. How . . . unexpected, and curious, that she’d been matched with someone artistic. “Can I see some of your work?”

Ben shrugged and scrolled through his phone to show her a few images, almost entirely of nature: an enormous waterfall, the stars against a dark velvet sky. Even beneath the cracked screen, Rey could tell they were incredible. There was something bold, almost audacious about them. They practically shouted at you, daring you to look elsewhere.

“Where did you take these?” she breathed.

“The city, mostly.”

_“New York?”_

He grinned. “Shocking, I know. Some of them are in Riverside Park; some are on rooftops.”

“So the bridal portraits—”

“I photograph weddings on the side. It helps pay for college.” Ben adjusted the strap of his bag. “You’d be surprised how many couples are okay with just a student, given how much cheaper I am than the professionals.”

“That’s impressive,” Rey said. These looked professional enough to her.

As they emerged on the Jersey side of the river, Ben’s phone buzzed with more incoming messages. He pulled it out of his coat pocket with a frown and tapped out a quick reply. She wondered if he was setting up Clicks with the other girls in his top one percent, since this one had clearly become a flop. She shouldn’t care, Rey reminded herself, not when the contents of the data chip were about to be lost. But some foolish part of her cared anyway.

“Here’s our stop,” Ben said into the silence, as the train rattled up to the Jersey City PATH station.

As they climbed the steps, Rey couldn’t help feeling that Jersey had put out its worst welcome mat specially for her—all she could see were little spots of ugliness, a dried dog turd on the ground, a dirty boarded-up window, illuminated by the dismal light of a flickering neon bar sign.

Then Ben stepped up next to her, and something about his presence, warm and solid and vaguely sweet-smelling, reassured her. As if he’d turned on a light, and revealed all the ugliness to be just her own fear, cloaked in shadows. She took a deep breath, trying to shake the strange urge to cry.  _I’m sorry, Rose. I think my project is really gone._

 _Don’t give up yet,_ she could practically hear her sister reply.  _You might be surprised._

“Your taxi’s exiting the tunnel.” Ben held out his phone so she could see the tiny blue dot moving toward them. They stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Rey’s heart sank.

The highway was a four-lane army of taxis as far as the eye could see, like a surrealist painting come to life. Its yellow smear somehow reminded her of the overbright lemon yellow of the Click app.

“Can you call my phone again?” she asked. Her mind was spinning, trying to calculate just how on earth she was going to find her phone in this sea of taxis.

Ben nodded and called her number, and Rey took off running.

* * *

 

**BEN**

“Keep calling it!” Rey darted between the cabs, moving slippery and quick like a fish through the oncoming traffic, and Ben saw at once what she was doing. She was trying to locate her phone, in a crowded intersection, by listening for her ringtone.

It was so ridiculous that it just might work.

A moment later he heard her phone. “Just a small-town girl, livin’ in a lonely world.” And he saw it, sitting innocuously in the passenger seat of a nearby cab, flashing and playing that iconic Journey song. He and Rey exchanged a glance and then sprinted at the same time, both of them dodging traffic. swerved around her; and then the cab was in the left-hand lane, already turning into another street, and they were too late.

Ben grabbed Rey roughly by the shoulders and pulled her onto the sidewalk. “Stop it. You’re going to get us both killed,” he exclaimed, but she barely seemed to register his words.

“Where did it go?” Her entire expression was bright and tremulous with hope. Ben wordlessly handed over his phone, realizing as he did that the screen was dark.

“You let it die? How  _could_  you?” Rey snapped at the rubber band again, and this time she snapped it hard enough to break. It fell in a forlorn piece onto the dirty street.

“Rey, it’s just a phone,” he said quietly. “You can get a new one tomorrow. It’s not worth getting hurt over.” Though to be honest, the way she’d darted through the streets like the heroine of an action movie  _had_  been kind of badass.

“It’s not about the phone.” Her voice sounded raw and ragged at the edges. “It’s the data chip snapped into it. There’s stuff on there that I can’t afford to lose.”

“What?”

“Rose,” Rey whispered, and burst into sobs.

“It’s okay.” Confused, Ben pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, letting her sob until his overcoat was damp with tears. “What do you mean?” he murmured when she finally stepped back, wiping at her eyes. Who was Rose?

“My sister passed away last summer.”

“I’m so sorry.” Ben still had one hand in hers, and he gave it a little squeeze. Rey blinked, as if startled by the physical contact, but didn’t take her hand away.

“So I’ve been building this program, for virtual reality. I did all the coding, and the rendering and the interface . . .” she said haltingly.

Ben didn’t understand. “What is it?”

“It brings people back to life.” At his shocked expression, she hurried to clarify. “Not literally! It creates a hyperrealistic, personalized avatar of a person—it looks like them, talks like them—so you can have conversations with them after they’re gone.”

“That’s crazy,” Ben blurted out, and something electric kindled in Rey’s eyes.

“Crazy is losing your sister—your best friend in the whole world—without ever getting to say good-bye,” she told him, and he nodded, chastened by the fire in her voice.

“Anyway, it works a lot like Click. It starts by pulling from the person’s online presence, to get a sense of their personality so it can mimic them. But the more data you give it, by uploading e-mails or voice mails or anything else, the better the avatar becomes.” She gave a shaky smile. “Lucky for me, Rose had a  _big_  online presence, so the avatar really sounds like her. I’ve uploaded everything I could find of hers, every message and tweet and post and comment, to create her avatar. I just . . . like talking to her, sometimes. It helps me,” she finished quietly.

Ben couldn’t even imagine. He felt unshed tears tightening in his throat. “But why is it on a data chip?” he asked. “I mean, haven’t you uploaded it to the cloud?”

“The cloud? Where anyone with half a brain could hack it?” Rey repeated, as if she’d personally hacked multiple things from the cloud, which for all Ben knew she had. “Everyone knows the only really safe way to protect something is to keep it on a hard drive, locally, and then keep the hard drive with you at all times.” Ben wasn’t at all sure that everyone knew that, but it didn’t seem right to argue. “Are you going to sell this program, when you’re done with it?”

“Of course not. I would never try to make money off grieving people.” Rey took a step back, and her eyes were fierce in the golden light of the streetlamps. “When it’s finished, I’m putting it online, for free.”

“Then we’ll get it back,” Ben said, and for the first time that night, he felt certain of it. Now that he understood, he would go to the ends of the earth to get that phone, if need be.

“By the way,” he added, because he felt suddenly desperate for Rey to smile, “Journey is my favorite, too.”

* * *

 

#### REY

Rey took another sip of her pomegranate iced tea and glanced around the Starbucks, which was the same as every other Starbucks the world over; the same harried people rushing in and out, their eyes glued to their phone screens. She still felt a little embarrassed for the way she’d unloaded on Ben. She hadn’t even told her parents about her software program. But Ben had taken it all in stride, with a calm determination that softened the edges of her fear. She would find her data chip, because she had to, and that was that.

Ben shifted next to her, drinking his own pomegranate tea. Rey had been surprised when he’d ordered the same unusual drink as her, but after all, they were ninety-nine percent compatible. On the table next to her, his phone was plugged into her recharging dock.

“I want to see your photos. In real life. Can I buy one?” she asked, voicing her thoughts aloud.

He smiled. “You’d be my first real customer.”

“But they’re so good!”

Ben’s eyes were very warm and very serious. “No one wants to hang art like that anymore. All they want are little square-shaped selfies they can post online.”

“I’m sorry.” Rey thought of the bare walls of her dorm room and winced. They suddenly felt cold and austere, and impersonal.

At least she wasn’t guilty of posting the selfies that Ben clearly resented so much. No, that had always been Rose’s thing.

She glanced down at his phone. The charge had jumped up to three percent. And the blue dot was back—much closer than before.

“Come on!” she exclaimed, and pulled Ben abruptly to his feet.

The touch of Rey’s hand sent a shock up Ben’s nerves, like a jolt of electricity, as he hurried after her out the door.

It had started to snow. The snow fell like a light dusting of sugar over everything, blanketing the city in a still, white enchantment. It froze in tiny clumps on Rey’s hair, thickening her eyelashes.

“This way!” She ran forward into the wind. Her ponytail whipped behind her like a snow-flecked banner.

“Did you ever make snow monkeys when you were a kid?” Ben asked as they came to a stop at an intersection.

“Don’t you mean snow angels?”

“In my family we did snow monkeys.” Ben lifted one foot and tilted his head, looping his arms in an exaggerated pose to demonstrate. “My older brother made it up, and from then on it was always snow monkeys. My parents even gave us banana peels to make it realistic.”

“Rose and I used to run outside and try to catch the snowflakes on our tongue. She liked to say that the snow was magic, and if I caught a perfect snowflake, my wish would come true.” Rey smiled wistfully at the memory. Her breath came in visible puffs against the cold night air.

Ben loved the thought of Rey believing in magic. He wanted to ask what she’d wished for—what she wished for right now.

The light turned green, and she rose impatiently onto her toes. He took a step closer before she could run off again. “Wait,” he breathed, and reached a hand toward her face.

* * *

 

  **REY**

Gently, Ben tucked her hair behind her ear. Rey’s breath caught, as if she’d climbed up a mountain and the air was suddenly dangerously thin.

And then he reached behind him for his camera and took a picture.

“The way the light hits you . . . this is incredible,” he murmured.

The moment his picture was done, she took off running across the street again. Of course it was the light that he found beautiful. Not her. Stupid, stupid to think that he’d been about to kiss her. She focused all her energies on that blue dot, which was so close now, just around the corner.

She came to a halt outside a divey restaurant,  _Jersey’s Finest Tacos_  handpainted on the sign outside. Whoever had her phone must be in there. Rey kicked open the door, not waiting for Ben, though she could hear his footsteps in pursuit.

Right away she saw her driver, the same one who’d congratulated her on joining Click: He was in line for a freaking  _taco_ , her phone in its plain red case clutched in his hands.

“Oh my God,” Ben said behind her, with a strangled laugh. “Is he about to trade your phone for a taco?”

The driver caught sight of Rey and smiled proudly. “It’s you! I have your phone!” he announced, as if she didn’t already know. He took in Ben standing next to her, and grinned even wider. “Is this your Click date?”

 _See!_ She could almost hear Rose exclaiming in triumph.  _I_  told  _you that magical things happen on the first snow day!_

Rey barely managed a “thank you” as she reached for her phone. She popped out the data chip and held it tight in her hand, so tight that the plastic pressed angrily into her skin. Then she turned back to Ben. “Thank you for helping me get this back. I’m sorry that our date was ruined.” She let out a breath. “I’m sure you have other girls that you’ve Clicked with, but maybe we could . . .”

Her phone kept buzzing nonstop. Rey glanced down impatiently, and the first thing she saw was a long string of messages from Click. But they didn’t make sense.

She let her eyes skim over the first few, and felt a sudden, awful twist in her stomach.  _No,_  she thought,  _it can’t be._

She was supposed to be on a different date tonight, with someone else. Not Ben. Since Click thought she was already on that date, it had opened a chat room for her and her guy, who’d sent a lot of “where are you???” messages. She swiped over to look at his full profile, which was now visible. His name was Kevin. He was at Harvard for mechanical engineering—God, had he come all the way from Boston, just for her? He looked nice, and pleasant. Not to mention boring.

She glanced up at Ben. “You didn’t know that you were on the wrong date?” It came out like a croak.

“Yeah. I messaged her when we were on the train, to cancel.”

Rey nodded, swallowing the urge to cry. She didn’t fully understand why she was so upset, except that she’d believed that she and Ben  _belonged_  together, the way she’d believed in magic when she was a child; with a blind, unquestioning faith. They’d ordered the same drink at Starbucks, had the same favorite song! She’d thought that was proof of their compatibility, of Click’s genius at work—but it was just coincidence, just random noise in that endless sea of data.

They hadn’t Clicked. Ben wasn’t in her top one percent of statistical romantic matches; he wasn’t anything at all to her, just a stranger who’d been unlucky enough to meet her at a bar, and get roped into a quest for her data chip.

She should have known, should have realized they were so logically improbable together. And yet.

“I’m sorry,” Rey said shakily. She would never have asked him to stand someone up, if she’d known.

“I’m not.” Ben grinned. “Like I said, spontaneity leads to good things.”

Her heart began to skip in her chest. “I just thought we’d Clicked . . .” she trailed off, and Ben laughed, as if she’d told a joke.

“Rey. We  _did_  click. We don’t need permission from an algorithm for that.”

Her pulse became even more erratic, her chest tightening in a confused mess of feelings. She felt painfully aware of everything—the data chip in her hand, the cold flecks of snow in her hair, the liquid intensity of Ben’s eyes. It was as if she were feeling everything for the first time: the way she’d felt after her first kiss, or after she’d built her first working computer program. As if the entire world was raw and new and bursting with possibility.

Ben leaned in and lightly tucked her hair behind her ear, again. But this time he lowered his lips to hers.

 _This_ was how it should feel, she realized, as the kiss deepened and the world seemed to fall silent. She rose up on tiptoe, her blood pounding with a wild, furious joy.

When he finally stepped away, she felt a little dizzy. “So,” Ben said, holding out a hand, “now that we’ve found your phone, I’d like to go on a date. Can I interest you in a taco?”

Rey took his hand, trying her best to ignore the cabdriver, who was giving them an unironic thumbs-up in the corner.

“I’d love a taco,” she declared, and grinned. “I hear they’re Jersey’s finest.”


End file.
